History of Printing Timeline: 1827 – 1880
May 28, 2024 | Posted in: PGSF Blogs | Student Resources
Source – printinghistory.org/timeline/
1827
John B. Russwurm establishes Freedom’s Journal, first African-American newspaper in New York.
Means for mass-producing wood type invented by Darius Wells in New York.
Mass-produced newspaper, The New York Sun, “the penny press.”
1827 – 1838
Audubon’s The Birds of America. Hand-colored, life-size prints, often referred to its large size as the double elephant folio.
1828
Darius Wells published the first known catalogue of wood type.
Wells introduced the lateral router for cutting endgrain wood type which, when combined with the pantograph in 1834, created the essential wood type making machinery that lasted over 150 years.
1829
Louis Braille develops a tactile writing system used by the blind.
1830
Adams Power Press introduced.
Calendered paper produced in England.
1830s
Paperback books appear in England and Ireland.
1834
London Union of Compositors formed by the merger of the London Trade Society of Compositors and the London General Trade Society of Compositors.
Darius introduced the lateral router for cutting endgrain wood type which, when combined with the pantograph created the essential wood type making machinery that lasted over 150 years.
Augustin Zamorano establishes a printing operation at Monterrey, Alta California, the first on the western seaboard of North America.
1835
Padre Martinez brings the first printing press to New Mexico.
1837
Chromolithography (multicolor printing).
1838
Electrotype plates invented by Moritz von Jacobi.
First successful type casting machine patented in the U.S. by David Bruce Jr.
1839
Practical photography developed.
After acquiring a small handpress from a Hawaiian mission, Henry Spaulding establishes the Lapwai Mission Press in Northwestern Idaho and prints the first book produced west of the Rocky Mountains in the Nez Perce language.
1841
First paperback books are published by Tauchnitz Verlag in Germany
A system of syllabic signs for the Cree language compiled by James Evans in Manitoba.
1843
Rotary letterpress developed.
1844
Paper cutter patented by Guillaume Massiquot.
Toronto Typographical Union established, the oldest trade union in Canada.
1849
Thomas Howard forms by hand in Salt Lake City the first paper produced in the arid North American West. The paper was used to produce binder’s board and in the local newspaper, the Deseret News.
1850
New York Printers’ Union founded.
Heidelberg printing press manufacturer established in Heidelberg, Germany.
1851
Platen job press developed by George Phineas Gordon.
Paper made from wood pulp.
1852
National Typographical Union founded in the United States.
1853
Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893) founded The Provincial Freeman in Windsor, Ontario. The first female Black woman publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada.
1855
The Bank of England issues modern standardized bank notes.
1856
Paper folding machine.
1857
Work begins on The Oxford English Dictionary.
1860
Rotary gravure printing press developed.
1861
Confederates capture Mesilla (New Mexico Territory) and throw the local printing press into the Rio Grande.
1866
American Printer. A Manual of Typography by Thomas MacKellar.
1869
National Typographical Union (U.S.) changes name to International Typographical Union to include Canada. First to admit women as members.
Golding & Co., a manufacturer of platen printing presses, founded in Boston.
1870
Collotype, or photogelatin printing.
Shniedewend & Lee, a printing equipment manufacturer, founded in Chicago.
1871
Daily Yokohama Mainichi Shimbun first newspaper in Japan established.
1873
Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (called Great Western Type Foundry until 1883). Bought out by American Type Founders in 1911.
1875
Rotary offset lithographic printing press developed.
Mimeograph invented by Thomas Edison.
1876
Plantin-Moretus Museum established in Antwerp on the premises of the printing house founded by Christophe Plantin in the sixteenth century.
1879
Benday process for production of color images in newspapers.
Gestetner Cyclograph stencil method duplicator.
Smyth sewing machine for bookbinding.
1880
Halftone printed from a photograph: “A Scene in Shantytown” in the New York Daily Graphic.
Printers’ International Specimen Exchange an influential annual subscription publication that ran until 1898.
James E. Hamilton of Two Rivers, Wisconsin opened a wood type factory in which scroll-sawed veneer wood type was made. The company later switched to endgrain router-made wood type and operated until around 1990. See Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum.
Contributors
Substantive comments and suggestions provided by Abby Bainbridge, George Barnum, Barbara Beeton, Terry Belanger, Charles A. Bigelow, Frank Caserta, Douglas Charles, Sarah Chute, Walter Delaney, Erik Desmyter, Sue Durrell, Paul F. Gehl, Jeffrey D. Groves, John G. Henry, Howard Iron Works Museum, Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, Fritz Klinke, Joel Larson, Keelan Lightfoot, Mathieu Lommen, Se Eum Park, Stan Nelson, Xavier Querol, John Risseeuw, Helen Robinson, Paul Romaine, Frank J. Romano, Walker Rumble, Richard Saunders, Stephen O. Saxe, Ad Stijnman, Katherine Victoria Taylor, Philip Weimerskirch, Eric M. White, Colyn Wohlmut, Woo Sik Yoo, and Corinna Zeltsman.
Sources
Berry, W. Turner and H. Edmund Poole. Annuals of Printing, Blandford 1966
Chappell Warren. A Short History of the Printing Word, Hartley & Marks, 1999
Clair, Colin. A Chronology of Printing, Praeger, 1969
The GATF Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications. Graphic Arts Technical Foundation GATF Press, 1998
Moran, James. Printing Presses, University of California Press, 1973 | ebook
[Republic of Korea] Cultural Heritage Administration
Steinberg, S. H. Five Hundred Years of Printing, Oak Knoll & The British Library, 1996
Stijnman, Ad. Engraving and Etching 1400–2000. A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes. ‘t Goy-Houten-London, 2012
Wallis, Lawerence W. A Concise Chronology of Typesetting Developments 1886–1986 , Wynkyn de Worde Society/Lund Humpheries, 1992
